BIG Data Center
in Beijing Institute of Genomics

iDog: An Integrated Resource for Domestic Dogs and Wild Canids

ADMIN Feb 21, 2019

Recently, the dog database — iDog was developed in the BIG Data Center at Beijing Institute of Genomics (BIG), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in cooperation with Kunming Institute of Zoology, and was published online in Nucleic Acids Research. The iDog is the first integrated resource dedicated to domestic dogs and wild canids, providing a variety of data services and online analysis tools to dog researchers around the world.

Domestic dog is one of the most diverse species in nature, and is also a fundamental model for many heritable human diseases. In recent years, with the development of genomics technology, more and more canine genomes have been analyzed, and biological data on canine genes, SNPs, breeds, diseases, gene expressions and so on have been released in large numbers. However, there is no database that provides complete data service for canids, which is inconvenient for this kind of research.

The iDog incorporates a variety of omics data to provide unified data sharing service. It also integrates sequence alignment tools for data analyses and a genome browser for data visualization. iDog will not only benefit the global dog research community, but also provide access to a user-friendly consolidation of dog information to a large number of dog enthusiasts.

The iDog has good scalability and sustainability, and hosts various databases including SNP database based on 127 resequenced domestic dog samples, canine gene database containing 32,220 genes, gene expression database based on RNA-Seq data, literature on canine diseases, homolog gene database on Dog-Human diseases, database on genome sequences assemblies for canids, etc. iDog will continue to integrate more omics data and update high-quality data sets under the background of Dog10K project, so as to gradually transform them into a repository of information and knowledge for basic research on canids.

This research was supported by Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Key Research Program of China, etc.